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THE CHINA REVIEW.
immense
and not to proceed to any distance from town alone, on account of the island being in- fested with robbers. In 1848 an attempt was made to poison 25 soldiers of the Royal Artillery. In 1853 more than 70 cases of piracy occurred in the neighbourhood of Hongkong, whilst the number of robberies from houses and from the person which were daily reported was almost incredible. In 1954 the whole of the European population was thrown into an abject state of terror by the rumoured approach of an piratical fleet, and several hundred armed Chinese, preparing for an attack on Kaulung, were captured in the streets of Hongkong. In 1857 incendiarism was flourishing in Hongkong, piracies were recorded almost every week, an attempt was made to poison the whole foreign catmunity, and in December that year the Government, fearing a general emeute of the Chinese population, had to issue a notification stating that, at the Central Police Station, one hundred staud of arms complete, with appointments and ammunition, were ready for the use of that portion of the Foreign Community who These were unprovided with fire-arINS.” facts require no comment. Let the philan- thropist say what his good nature indites as to the orderly character of the ordinary Chinaman, but the past history of Hongkong shows plainly that the "heathen Chines" is a good-natured harmless individual enough till the devil is roused in him by misfortune, had example, temptation or misgovernment.
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Now what did the Hongkong Government de for the native population during this first period of the history of Hongkong? Laws were made for them, police regulations were framed, revised, recast; Ordinances were published without number, some of which were indeed published in Chinese but worded so obscurely that, on several cecasions, the badness of the translation produced misun- derstandings, which ended in riots and blood- shed. Education, schools for the children of the native or foreign population, appear to
But
have never occurred to the Government, or at any rate no attempt was made in such a direction, till, full fourteen years after the occupation of Hongkong, a public meeting was held on 6th March 1835, "to consider racans for the establishment of a public school." One thing, however, was attempted with a view to bring the complaints of the native population before the governing classes, and to produce a better under- standing between both, viz. an offies of Protector of Chinese" was created by Sir John Davis in 1846. This was a well- meant measure and certainly a step in the right direction, but the duties of this office remained a dead letter, owing to the successive Registrars General, who filled the post, being more or less ignorant of the Chinese language, until Mr. D. R. Caldwell was appointed Protector of Chinese. even he, with his competout knowledge of the speech and customs of the Cantonese people, was but imperfectly acquainted with the written language and could therefore not do fall justice to this important office. As to the interpretation in the Courts, there was during this whole period no competent interpreter attached to the Police Magistracy or Supreme Court with the exception of Mr. Caldwell, nor was any attempt made, on the part of the Government, to provide for competent interpreters for the future. The fow sentences in power of speaking a Chinese was looked upon as little short of miraculous, and the native interpreters in the Courts, with their imperfect know- ledge of English and their ignorance of more than one native dialect, with their power for good or evil to represent or misrepresent what witnesses or defendants stated, remained absolutely unchecked. There were some competent Chinese scholars during this period attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, as long as the Governors of Hongkong held also the office of Superin- tendent of Trade. There were Morrison, Thom, Gützlaff, Mongan, Wade, but their time was occupied with documentary trans-
CHINESE STUDIES AND OFFICIAL INTERPRETATION.
lation work, they having to conduct the correspondence between the British and Chinese Governments, and when the office of Superintendent of Trade was, in 1854, transferred to Shanghai, there was, apart from the Missionaries, not a man left in Hongkong thoroughly acquainted with both the written and spoken languages of China. There was a good deal of pretence to Chinese acquirements by one or two persons, a sort of thing of which only too conspicuous an example had been set by Sir John Bowring, but there was no reality. The amount of Chinese knowledge of which the average English official of the Colony was possessed, during the period which elapsed before Sir Hercules Robinson's arrival, is best illus- trated by an episode which occurred in Colonel Caine's, the Chief Magistrate's, Court. But for the better understanding of this really authentic story, I must premise, that Colonel Caine had hour in social inter- course with other officials that a great discussion was going on among Sinologists as to the meaning of a barbarian,” but that he was entirely unaware of the popular epithets applied, up to the present duy, by the common speech of the people to foreigners in general fan kwai i.e. foreign devil, and to Englishmen I
A lưng màu Kazi ie. red-haized devil. This will explain the following incident, as reported, in Tarrant's "Hongkong" (p. 109):---
Magistrate: Collins,-Collins, I say. Collins: Your Honour! Magistrate: Did not that witness say fin
kwai in his evidence? Collins: He did, your Honour i Magistrate: Then take him out of the
Court and give him three lashes! (Lashes administered). And now, Inter- preter, tell the witness that when he speaks of an Englishman in this Court he must call him hương anh Kuri
*The truth probably was that the witness esid, after baring given his evidence
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Mr Caldwell was the only Government officer during this whole period who could orally interpret from Cantonese into English, and vice versa, with correctness and fluency, but the other dialects, spoken by at least one fourth of the population of Hongkong, viz. the Hakka, Chin-chow or Swatow, Tiêchiu, Amoy and Foochow dialects, remained abso- lutely without any competent interpreter. Ever since Mr. Caldwell resigned, the want of his services has been much felt, and his place has never been satisfactorily filled.
With the arrival of Sir Hercules Robin- son (1859) a new period opened in the his- tory of Hongkong. The policy that seemed to guide all previous Governors was princi- pally to provide for present urgent wants, to try and repress crime, to keep things smooth and to gloss over, by temporary measures, what could not be mended efficiently. It seemed as if each of them was averse to sowing seed which could not be expected to ripen within his own term of office. So they confined themselves each to pull down what his predecessor had built ap, or restricted their energies to simple political patchwork, a proceeding far more easy and especially more pleasing to personal vanity, than the laborious, self-denying task of laying solid foundations to be built on--or set aside---- by their successors in office.
Sir Hercules Robinson was a man of different stamp, patient, resolute, far-seeing. It is true the previous bad state of things, lawlessness and evime among the native population, continued for some years into his term of administration, but measures were introduced by him which were con- tinued by his successors and eventually succeeded in completely altering the state of things. The Civil Service had its abuses inquired into, the Police force was reconsti- tuted, the Gaol discipline was reformed, a
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“„fón ¿kwai” L.e. “may I go home?" for the words fan 'kmai "foreign devil," mean, whan pronounced in a different tons, füs kwai, to go home."
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